


Most real when unhealed.

by Dark_Ruby_Regalia



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: IgNoct, M/M, Massage, Some attention to nipples, The implications of magic, existential thoughts, lovemaking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-24
Updated: 2017-08-24
Packaged: 2018-12-19 10:29:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11895813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dark_Ruby_Regalia/pseuds/Dark_Ruby_Regalia
Summary: The body breaks, and the body comes together again.The mind may take a little longer...





	Most real when unhealed.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [its_pronounced_wiener_slave](https://archiveofourown.org/users/its_pronounced_wiener_slave/gifts).



He’d gone down hard a few times that day. More than usual. They were all tired, strained, taken by surprise. Handling it however it could be handled. For Ignis that meant narrowing his attention to what was most valuable: Noctis. And Noctis, despite his weariness, was blinking in and out above him in ethereal blue sparks, slipping through the moments with a pervasive clarity. He was missing his hits, but he was catching his companions as they fell. And they all fell. Ignis most of all, as he fought at the back of his Prince of Light, who seemed to flicker all around him, evasive, leaving only a trace imprinted on the darkness. He couldn’t keep up.

 

He remains lucid in the hard falls, his body all but lost to him, life waning. He’s aware of the singed earth beneath his cheek, still warm and smoking, filling his lungs with each shallow breath. Aware of the screams and howls of the fight, its dull thuds of contact, the cry of hurt friends. Aware of waiting, and the eternity spent in that small moment. Pain acknowledged and borne with well-practiced endurance. A trial of time: hold on until the magic comes. And eventually it does, his life ever in Noct’s hands.

 

But there was nothing that felt natural about the way magic re-worked a body. No amount of repetition that prepared him for it, that made it less strange, less invasive. His body had pulled itself together time and time again. Part of his mind understood this; another part struggled. Maybe because the magic works everywhere at once, overwhelming every nerve with sensation. A processing blackout. Maybe it’s because magic comes from the earth: from something to which time and structure are unfathomably vast, enduring, unmoving. It has no place being poured into an ephemeral vessel. Flesh. And maybe it’s because people were destined to die, and the unnatural part of this was _him_ , evading it. Ignis was aware, so aware of his mortality...

 

He dwells on it sometimes. On the mechanisms: magic following some kind of tissue memory, repairing. Connecting bits of himself with bits of himself. The biology works. Cells align, skin grows, wounds heal. Scars are formed neat and tight knit, if they’re left at all. He wonders how much of his body history has been erased like this.

 

Afterwards, when the battle is won and adrenaline fades, and the body comes down and the mind re-engages with it, he’s left to himself and the lingering strangeness. A restless kind of scampering beneath the skin, electric and uncomfortable. Twitchy-limbed, heavy. Peripherally disembodied. A feeling he fights for hours, sometimes days, as he adjusts to being un-hurt. To being alive.

 

Noctis knows all this. He knows how unusual it feels, how heavy it weighs. Heavier still with the implications of it: if he hadn’t been ready, been waiting... Does he expect them to fall, then, if he’s always looking to rescue? Perhaps. They all take it for granted, and there’s a recklessness to it that Noct thrills with the idea of... but reality is he’s custodian of his companions’ lives, and he can’t rebel against that. Trust as reckoning force. Faith always did seem wound around a strand of fear.

 

They don’t talk about it. Not with words, at least. By duty they dance too near the edge of the void to acknowledge it directly.

 

\--

 

Later, closed in between safe walls, they let their guard down. Just the two of them, collapsed into their own exhaustion. Ignis’ body won’t settle. He lies rigid and uncomfortable, pretending stillness to let Noct sleep, but it never works. Noctis feels him. He hears the controlled breath, the click of clenched teeth. And his heart aches, that he’s the reason Ignis is uncomfortable now. His life a priority, and Ignis’ forfeit. The horrible realities of station.

 

Noctis reaches out for him, touches him gently at first, to let him know he’s on his way. Then he goes to him completely, roused and on his knees, running hands over every part of his skin. He urges Ignis onto his stomach and sits atop him. They’re both unclothed, and Noctis admires their points of contact. Their alignments. His knees tucked tight either side of Ignis’ sides; his soft cock draped between Ignis’ round buttocks; his thumbs on the dimples either side of Ignis’ spine. They’re the perfect place for palms to set out from as Noct runs the flat of his hands up along back, between shoulder blades, to neck. He presses fingers against the base of skull, feeling for tense muscles, curls himself over to lay kisses there, then rights himself again, bringing his hands back to dimples along the same path.  

 

Then the massage starts in earnest, rhythmic but filled with contrasts in the pressure and quality of touch. Noctis is imaginative: he varies his contact from feather light to firm, from the point of a single finger to the expanse of his own chest as he stretches over Ignis again, pressing against him, running his hands along Ignis’ arms until their fingers can tangle together. Then back to being sat atop him, pawing at his shoulders, watching for the change in Ignis’ breathing while he idly rolls his hips against the rise of firm cheeks. It’s tactical, and it always works.

 

Ignis takes a deep breath and shifts beneath him. Before he has time to settle, Noctis is pulling him onto his back, keeping him tucked between his knees. He sits down again, making adjustments to position until they’re comfortable, close, warm against each other. Then he places hands flat on Ignis’ chest, resting them there, a pause to let intention shift. He lowers his face to Ignis’, brings their lips together, kisses him the same way he fights: lithe, evasive, precise. He breaks it off with a nip as he works his way downward, no longer a massage, but with the same purpose.

 

He’s imaginative this way too: letting his dark hair fall across sensitive areas of skin, trailing kisses everywhere, keeping contact with his hands and his lips and his hips as he caresses every inch of Ignis’ chest. He is fluttering eyelashes and full lips, fingernails and warm breath. Noct is a storm of tactility that builds and spreads, swells and gusts, until suddenly all is still as he hovers above a nipple. He licks it for moisture and blows it to chill. Ignis gasps, and Noct smiles, scraping teeth over bud as Ignis slides fingers through his hair. It’s an unspoken plea for more.

 

Noctis draws out the lull. He breathes against skin, metred and silent. He lets his hands roam, barely there, tracing over contours but denying traction. Ignis is tuned to them, focused, following them around his own body. But they’re a diversion... a misdirection that lets Noct line up a hard, sharp bite.

 

It comes fast and mean, and Ignis’ whole body twitches in shock and arches off the bed, clenching fists around handfuls of bedsheet. He releases a jagged moan to the darkness of the room, then whimpers when he finds himself alone.

 

Noctis reaches for him a second time that night, crawls tentatively back into his lap, and Ignis kisses him, fevered and alight with gratitude. They make love then, drunk and emotional on their exhaustion and desire, falling all over and into each other as their bodies take up the burden of honesty. Any magical strangeness that lingered in their limbs is overlaid by new sensation and drowned beneath the deep sleep that finds them soon after.

 

Ignis’ mind is finally quiet, his body once again truly his. The bite mark smoulders in his skin, buried deep enough to leave a bruise for days. He will catch himself pressing at it, reviving its pain, re-living the skin moments over and over, feeling most real when unhealed...

 

Noct knows...

**Author's Note:**

> For Heich.  
> Of all people to win my silly secret contest, it had to be you...  
> xo


End file.
